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The dinosaur of the day: Thecodontosaurus

Sauropodomorph that lived in the Triassic in what is now England

Small, bipedal

About 3.9 ft (1.2 m) long, weighed about 24 lb (11 kg)

Largest ones estimated to be 8.2 ft (2.5 m) long

Had a short neck and large skull, with large eyes

Front limbs were shorter than hindlimbs

Hands were long and narrow, and had a large claw on each

Had five digits on its hands and feet

Tail was longer than the rest of the body

Had powerful back legs, could reach low hanging tree branches

Maybe could have swam? Used its tail as a rudder and strong limbs for swimming

Lived on a tropical island

Herbivorous

Had serrated, leaf-shaped teeth

Sharp teeth could tear up leaves

Originally thought to be carnivorous

Name means “socket-tooth lizard”

Found in 1834 at the Durdham Down quarry

Originally described and named in 1836

One of the first dinosaurs discovered (fourth or fifth named dinosaur, though Dinosauria as a concept didn’t exist until 1842)

Thecodontosaurus was at first thought to be a weird reptile that was similar to both lizards and crocodiles

Quarry workers found “saurian animals” remains in Bristol’s limestone quarries. They took some bones to the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Arts, so Samuel Stutchbury could see them. He was away, so his colleague Henry Riley took a look. When Stutchbury came back, he asked for more specimens. David Williams, a country parson and geologist, was aso excited. So there was a race between Williams and Stutchbury and Riley to describe the bones.

Stutchbury and Williams didn’t trust each other (Williams thought Stutchbury was selfish in trying to get all the fossils to the Bristol Institution, and Stutchbury thought Williams was trying to poach fossils). They both worked on descriptions of the dinosaur. However, Williams didn’t have as many fossil material as Riley and Stutchbury so he didn’t try to turn his report in 1835 into a legitimate description of the animal. Riley and Stutchbury named Thecodontosaurus and gave a short description in a talk in 1836 then finished their paper in 1838 and published in 1840

Name refers to the roots of the teeth not being fused with the jaw bone but instead in separate tooth sockets (like modern lizards)

Originally Riley and Stutchbury though it was a member of Squamata (lizards and snakes). Owen did not consider it to be a dinosaur (assigned it to Thecodontia in 1865). Then in 1870 Thomas Huxley found it was a dinosaur, though thought it was a Scelidosauridae. Modern analysis is still not conclusive (sometimes seen as a basal sauropodomorph, or may have come before the prosauropod-sauropod split)

Only one valid species, the type species Thecodontosaurus antiquus (though many other species have been named)

Species named in 1843 by John Morris, in his catalogue of British fossils

Species name means “ancient” in Latin

Holotype consists of a lower jaw

Holotype was destroyed in WWII in November 1940 during the Bristol Blitz

Some bones survived (184 are now part of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, and more fossils were later found near Bristol at Tytherington)

About 245 fragmentary specimens are currently known

Peter Dalton assigned another lower jaw as the neotype in 1985

Lots of other misassigned species, some now considered to be other genera, some are dubious

Riley and Stutchbury also found some carnivore teeth that they named Paleosaurus cylindrodon and Paleosaurus platydon. In the late 1800s, there was a theory that they were from carnivorous prosauropods, with similar bodies to Thecodontosaurus but with teeth that could slice. Arthur Smith Woodward named Thecodontosaurus platydon in 1890 based on this, and Friedrich von Huene named Thecodontosaurus cylindrodon in 1908, but now they’re both not considered valid

Once, Thecodontosaurus fossils were mistakenly described as a different genus. In 1891, Harry Govier Seeley named Agrosaurus macgillivrayi. He thought the fossils found in 1844 that came from the northeast coast of Australia. But it was foun in 1999 that Riley and Stutchbury probably sent those bones to the British Museum of Natural History and were mislabeled. (In 1906, Friedrich von Huene said they were similar to Thecodontosaurus and named the species Thecodontosaurus macgillivrayi. Now it’s considered a junior synonym of Thecodontosaurus antiquus.

Part of the Bristol Dinosaur Project, which for ~4 years thousands of volunteers helped gather and preserve its fossils (lots of lab, research, and outreach work)

Fun Fact:
From episode 180: Stegosaur plates form from the same osteoderms that make up the armor on ankylosaurs

Sponsors:

This episode is brought to you in part by TRX Dinosaurs, which makes beautiful and realistic dinosaur sculptures, puppets, and animatronics. You can see some amazing examples and works in progress on Instagram @trxdinosaurs

And by Indiana University Press. Their Life of the Past series is lavishly illustrated and meticulously documented to showcase the latest findings and most compelling interpretations in the ever-changing field of paleontology. Find their books at iupress.indiana.edu

Episode 185 also features Procompsognathus a small dinosaur which probably ate insects, lizards, and other small prey

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Director JA Bayona talked about his work on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to Irish Times

The dinosaur of the day Procompsognathus

Appears in the books, instead of Compsognathus (which are in the films). Somewhat venomous, and kill John Hammond at the end of the first book

No evidence that it was venomous in real life

Coelophysid that lived in the Triassic in what is now Germany (Löwenstein Formation)

Name means “before elegant jaw” and comes from the name Compsognathus

Compsognathus lived later, in the Jurassic

Procompsognathus looks similar to Compsognathus, but no evidence that it was a direct ancestor

Found in 1909 by Albert Burrer

Holotype is an adult and included a crushed jaw, vertebrae, ribs, a forelimb, and hindlimbs

Burrer sent the fossils to Professor Eberhaad Fraas to the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, and in 1911 Fraas referred to it as Hallopus celerrimus, and thought it was a jumping dinosaur that helped show the origin of birds. Then in 1913 Fraas officially named it Procompsognathus

Type species is Procompsognathus triassicus

In 1921 Friedrich von Huene referred two more specimens found in the same quarry (back in 1908) to Procompsognathus (included a partial skull and lower jaws, and a left hand

However, there is controversy about von Huene’s referred specimens. John Ostrom in 1982 said they were from a different taxon, and Fabien Knoll in 2006 and 2008 found that they were a crocodylopmorph or some basal archosaur. Then in 2012 Knoll confirmed with a CAT-scan that one of the specimens was a crocodylomorph

Lots of debate over where to place Procompsognathus in the dinosaur family tree

Other dinosaurs that lived in the same time and place included coelophysoids Halticosaurus and Dolichosuchus, sauropodomorphs Plateosaurus and Efraasia, as well as an unnamed herrerasaur and some theropods (found tracks only)

Type specimen is at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, in Germany

Fun Fact:

The idea of “ancient DNA” predates Jurassic Park, including an essay by Charles Pellegrino in 1985 (five years before Jurassic Park was published) titled “Dinosaur Capsule” about bringing dinosaurs back to life—which was apparently inspired partly by flies trapped in amber.

This episode was brought to you by:

TRX Dinosaurs, which makes beautiful and realistic dinosaur sculptures, puppets, and exhibits. You can see some amazing examples and works in progress on Instagram @trxdinosaurs.